The Senate will likely move to dismiss the impeachment case against President Trump, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy said Tuesday.
Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” with host Bill Hemmer and Sandra Smith, McCarthy said he expects the case against Trump to be presented in one or two days.
“In fact, I think to the extent there’s a public political aspect to what we’re about to hear in the Rules Committee. It will be to tee up…what will ultimately be the motion to dismiss,” he stated.
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On Tuesday the Democrat-led House Rules Committee dove into a marathon session to prepare the ground rules for what is likely to be a furious showdown on the House floor to adopt articles of impeachment against the president. If articles of impeachment are approved as expected, the Senate would follow with a trial in early 2020.
McCarthy described the Senate trial as the “tripwire.”
“I think once you get to the point of saying ‘we can’t get rid of this, we can’t dismiss this without having a trial’ then all bets are off and it becomes a very difficult proceeding to corral,” he explained.
“The president has these witnesses who were at least forecast [to take part] in the House proceedings but we never got to hear them,” he continued. “The Republicans may have a very persuasive take now on Schumer’s proposition that we call these other witnesses who were not called in the House.”
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“But, once you get to the point in the trial where you allow the Senate to call witnesses or the Republicans and the president to call witnesses, you’ll have to allow the Democrats to call witnesses and then all bets are off because the trial could take off in all different areas,” he explained.
“I believe if they got to the precipice and they realized what bedlam the trial could become…my experience, even though there’s a little bit of herding cats aspect to this…is they like predictability more than anything else and the way that this is predictable is to get rid of [the case] at the beginning,” he concluded.
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
